SPEC CPU2000 System Requirements

Last updated: 27 Nov 2001 cds

A computer system running UNIX or Windows (NT-derived).
(See the
Portability Note below)

A CD-ROM drive

256MB of RAM. Attempting to run the suite with less memory
is strongly discouraged, as you will end up measuring the
speed of your paging file, not the speed of your CPU.

More memory will be needed if you run multi-user SPECrates.

Disk space:

Typically 2GB of disk space to install and run the suite.

More disk space will be needed if you plan to maintain a large
set of binaries.

More disk space will be needed if you plan to run SPECrates
with multiple copies. Note that SPECrates must be run using
a single file system, so large runs will likely require some
form of hardware or software disk striping.

Minimum requirement: It is possible to run with about 800MB
to 1GB of disk space if you are running only single-CPU
metrics and if you clean up the run directories between
experiments; see runspec.html for
more information.

Note: links to SPEC CPU2000 documents on this web page
assume that you are reading the page from a directory that
also contains the other SPEC CPU2000 documents. If by
some chance you are reading this web page from a location
where the links do not work, try accessing the referenced
documents at one of the following locations:

The $SPEC/docs/ directory on a Unix
system where SPEC CPU2000 has been installed.

The

%spec%\docs.nt\ directory on a Wind
ows/NT system where SPEC CPU2000 has been installed.

The

docs/ or
docs.nt\ directory on your S
PEC CPU2000 distribution cdrom.

Since SPEC supplies only source code for the benchmarks, you will
need either:

a. A set of compilers for the result(s) you intend to measure:
1) For SPECint2000: Both C and C++ compilers
2) For SPECfp2000: Both C and Fortran-90 compilers
--or--
b. A pre-compiled set of benchmark executables, given to you
by another user of the same revision of SPEC CPU2000, and
any run-time libraries that may be required for those
executables.

Please notice that you cannot generate a valid CPU2000 result
unless you meet all of requirement 5.a.1 or 5.a.2 or 5.b. For
example, if you are attempting to build the floating point suite
but lack a Fortran-90 compiler, you will not be able to measure
a SPECfp2000 result.

SPEC CPU2000 is a source code benchmark, and portability of that source
code is one of the chief goals of SPEC CPU2000. SPEC has invested
substantial effort to make the benchmarks portable across a wide variety
of hardware architectures, operating systems, and compilers. During the
development of SPEC CPU2000 V1.0, testing was done on 7 different hardware
architectures, 11 versions of Unix (including 4 Linux versions) and two
versions of Windows/NT.

During the development of SPEC CPU2000 V1.2, many of these
operating systems were re-tested, and in some cases newer versions
of the operating systems were tested. In the Windows family, testing
included Windows Advanced Server, Windows XP, and Windows 2000.
(Notice that SPEC CPU2000 is not compatible with versions of
Windows that are not derived from Windows NT. For example, SPEC
CPU2000 cannot be expected to work on Windows 95, Windows 98,
Windows 3.1, or Windows Me.)

Despite SPEC's testing efforts, certain portability problems are
likely to arise from time to time. For example:

Some platforms may not have a Fortran-90 compiler available.

Some older compilers may not include all the features
needed to run the entire suite.

Sometimes, a new release of a compiler or operating system
may introduce new behavior that is incompatible with one
of the benchmarks.

If you visit http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/
and look up results for SPEC CPU2000,
you will find combinations of OS and compiler versions that are known
to work. For example, if a vendor reports a SPECint2000 result on
the SuperHero 4 using SuperHero Unix V4.0 with SuperHero C V4.0 and
SuperHero C++ V4.0, you may take that as an assertion by the vendor
that the listed versions of Unix, C, and C++ will successfully
compile and run the SPEC CINT2000 suite on the listed machine.

For systems that have not (yet) been reported by vendors, SPEC can
provide limited technical support to resolve portability issues.
See techsupport.txt
for information.